The Royal wedding is seen on the big screen April 29, 2011 at Times Square in New York. The fairytale wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton captured the imagination of the world Friday, with millions sharing in the celebration of the royal nuptials at parties across the globe.An estimated two billion people watched on TV when William and Kate exchanged vows at Westminster Abbey, and even in the home to the Hollywood stars royal glamour shined strong.

Photo: Don Emmert, AFP/Getty Images

The Royal wedding is seen on the big screen April 29, 2011 at Times...

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Prince William and his wife Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, kiss on the balcony of Buckingham Palace in London, following their wedding on April 29, 2011.

Photo: John Stillwell, AFP/Getty Images

Prince William and his wife Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge,...

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Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, center, speaks with Carole Middleton, second from left, as Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, right, Britain's Prince Philip, left, and the Dean of Westminster John Hall, second from right in back, look on following the wedding ceremony of Britain's Prince William and his wife Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, at Westminster Abbey, London, Friday, April 29, 2011. (AP Photo/PA, Lewis Whyld) UNITED KINGDOM OUT, NO SALES, NO ARCHIVE

In the end, it was ABC's Robin Roberts who posed the question that may have been on a lot of TV viewers' wedding-weary minds: "What do we do now?"

Television, as expected, pulled out all the stops - not to mention dragooning virtually anyone with a British accent - to cover the marriage of Prince William and Catherine Middleton on Friday at Westminster Abbey. And by the time it was over, there wasn't a scone left unturned in the United Kingdom as seemingly every TV news organization, from ABC to E Entertainment, saturated the airwaves with coverage of the "wedding of the century."

How did TV do? By the start of the week, we'd already heard Barbara Walters repeat multiple times that the wedding guest list included the butcher, pub owner and yoga instructor from Bucklebury, the Middletons' home village. No wonder she was all atwitter when said pub owner, John Haley, was hauled in front of the ABC cameras Friday morning to offer his impressions after the ceremony.

In addition, on almost every news show and wedding special in the past two weeks, images from the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana Spencer seemed to be on an endless loop, with commentators comparing Catherine Middleton's supposed "readiness" for her new life to Diana's lack thereof. Soon enough, it was drilled into our heads that Diana and Charles had been in each other's company only 13 times before their engagement, while William and Catherine have been in a relationship for years.

Most of the networks covered the event the way they would the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade - with run-on and often repetitive commentary from their A-teams of talking heads - Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira for NBC; Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, David Muir and Roberts for ABC; short-timer Katie Couric for CBS; Piers Morgan and Anderson Cooper for CNN.

Yet, there were occasional glimmers of awareness that the wedding was taking place in a new century with an entirely different media landscape from the one familiar to those who covered the 1981 royal wedding. With the actual ceremony still more than two hours in the future, ABC reported it was getting 400,000 tweets a minute, while the E channel kept a running flowchart of tweets throughout the central part of Friday's coverage, which began at 1 a.m. Pacific time on the major networks. The chart spiked noticeably as the moment neared for "the kiss" on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. E's Jason Kennedy reported that the wedding was the subject of about one-fifth of all the world's tweets early this morning.

Of course there were the expected howlers from some of TV's commentators, but, for the most part, the wedding was great television, especially when everyone simply shut up and allowed the precisely choreographed ceremony to unfold as the Windsors had planned it. And say what you will about the monarchy, when the Windsors plan something, it gets planned to a fare-thee-well.

With 60 cameras installed in the abbey, pool footage captured both the magnificence and the intimacy of the ceremony in a way that needed no play-by-play from TV talking heads. Alas, even before the newlyweds made their four-minute exit stroll to the outside world, the heads were talking again like noisy squirrels in the attic. Of course, there were more than a few wince-inducing remarks from some of the on-air talent, as well as some clever or useful observations:

-- On Fox, Joan Lunden wondered where Diana might be seated if she were still alive and Camilla was married to Charles. Would she be with the Windsors or with the Middletons, across the aisle?

-- Repeating her observation about the Bucklebury middle-class butcher, yoga instructor and pub owner getting wedding invitations, Walters pondered the coincidence that the bride's family name is Middleton.

-- CNN's Morgan, otherwise one of the more informative of the British talking heads, gushed, "Am I the only one thinking: Prince Harry and Pippa Middleton" (the bride's sister)?

-- Couric reported that the relationship between the Windsors and the Middletons was at first like something out of "Meet the Fockers."

-- The Daily Beast's Tina Brown, working on ABC's dime, summed up Victoria Beckham's elegant but understated wedding attire: "Victoria wears that just to go running in Hollywood."

-- Sawyer, interviewing some young British schoolchildren on "World News" Thursday night, asked them if princes and princesses work. "No, because they're famous and don't like to work," one youngster offered.

-- Fashion expert Tim Gunn, zipping over to ABC after appearing on CNN, remarked on the female headgear, singling out the fascinator worn by Prince Andrew and Fergie's daughter, Beatrice, which looked like a beige caduceus landed on her forehead. Apparently, he said, the assemblage already has its own Facebook page.

-- Richard Quest, who seemed to be filling the Bruno Tonioli slot on CNN's panel, reported that Prince William was rumored to have had a "minor manicure" so that his hands would be ready for their close-up when he slipped the ring on Catherine's finger.

-- And Kennedy, in true E style, all but smacked his lips as he observed the bride in her Sarah Burton dress: "The duchess is hot!"

-- Finally, having apparently run out of anything new to talk about with historian David Starkey, Couric asked, "How do you think it's going so far?"

The answer: The ceremony went swimmingly and, for the most part, TV didn't do too badly.